Ian had never been the world's greatest hacker, but he made do. Sometimes going through proper channels for authorisation meant not only a delay but also a digital trail; something a fleeing Syn could find and latch on to, to anticipate his next move. And he hadn't survived twenty years in this business by giving his targets advance warning.

So he hacked.

Right now he hacked street cameras, his nexus hooked up to an amp to boost its processing power. The three hours he'd managed to sleep had left him feeling more tired than he'd been before, his headache having graduated to a full-blown migraine.

He wanted to rest more, for the sake of bringing Quentin home, but his body wouldn't cooperate; he might as well work.

The City ought to do a better job of guarding access to their system. Finding a way in was always absurdly easy, even for someone with Ian's median skills. There was the file he needed, neatly classified among millions, waiting for its turn to be purged in less than a week.

He downloaded it; he'd need other files if he were to follow the Syn's path, and didn't have room for all of them, but he wanted a copy of the accident. The vid materialised in 3D in his living room. The car, twisting in an arc after the incongruous falling billboard had struck it, could be seen from every angle. Ian zoomed inside with a voice command.

It was unsettling, seeing himself this way. Seeing the look of pain and confusion on a face that looked so much like Quentin's, as Ian drew his gun. There had to be a special place in hell reserved for people who programmed these things to be so lifelike, even in peacetime. And, there. That was the moment he'd passed out.

The Syn wasted no time undoing its seatbelt and pushing itself forward on the gnarled metal impaling it; a grotesque view. No human would have survived it. The Syn? It just kept moving.

It kicked the car's door off its hinges, and then... Then it pulled Ian outside and picked him up, close to its chest, as soon as Ian was clear of the car. Set him down against a nexus hub on the sidewalk with a gentleness and care that were all Quentin. Ian's throat clogged up, his eyes burning.

Fucking programmers playing god, hitting all the hard notes and missing the obvious ones.

Caught between the need to mimic Quentin's reactions and an unexpected car crash, the Syn hadn't known how to act. Conflicting directives, no doubt: maintain cover; preserve self. Ian was no programmer, but even he could have done a better job. If caught then abandon cover. Done.

The Syn took Quentin's camera bag from the car (why?) and went back to Ian's prone form, rifling through his pockets. Was it looking for whatever it had come to find? It took a traceless card and Ian ran the numbers. Three hundred credits, give or take. Why would it need credits? Had its programmer not set up a rendezvous point?

His blood froze when he saw the next image.

The Syn had taken his SynTracker Elite insignia. If it impersonated Ian, the insignia would get him inside government offices, and the possibilities— But, no. The Syn hadn't taken it for itself. It'd set it atop Ian's chest, clearly visible, just before pressing Ian's thumb to the glowing nexus.

TrackerEvac.

Their signature loophole: the contract's advertised response time was only valid if the Tracker issued a confirmation, five minutes after the original request; otherwise it could take them hours for an extraction, with no liability. Easier on their finances if they got there and a severely injured Tracker had died, instead of needing expensive procedures like organ cloning. If they were conscious to confirm the request, odds were they needed less expensive care. All insurance companies did it — legal murder of Trackers who'd outlived their profitability.

Ian had been unconscious. If the Syn hadn't confirmed the request, he'd have lain in that street for hours, either ignored or robbed for all he was worth. He couldn't help but notice the Syn had taken one card, not all three.

And it had stayed behind to watch.

TrackerEvac had gotten to the scene three minutes after confirmation, and the Syn wearing Quentin's face had lurked in the shadows for long enough to see Ian being taken away.

This was where the file ended, Ian's nausea escalating in time with the pounding inside his skull. The next two files had the Syn, heading east.

Then all cameras had gone dead for fifty minutes, because Syns weren't toys. They were weapons.

This meant the trail was gone for good. The moment the cameras were off, the Syn would have started appearance-altering protocols. It'd have taken it a good twelve hours, but that window had passed. It could look like anyone of the same height at this point. Without the codes, Ian had nothing.

The next logical step would have been to hack Quentin's bank account, to see if the Syn had taken any more credits before ditching the nexus, but Ian balked at that. Whether the thing had more or fewer credits wouldn't make enough of a difference in how Ian approached Tracking it to justify invading his husband's privacy.

No closer to finding Quentin, filled with more questions than he'd had before viewing the footage, Ian allowed himself to close his eyes, right there on the sofa Quentin loved so much. Just a couple of hours, until dawn broke.

☵☲☵

His nexus displayed 8:17 when he next blinked awake. Another three hours of restless slumber. None of his symptoms had abated, but they weren't crippling. He'd take the win.

One breakfast and two painkillers later, he sat in his garage.

He kept his work tools there, including Syn service and production manuals he'd accumulated over the years, that he'd coaxed out of the greasy hands of corporate drones. The figurative kind, not the literal one; he'd have found literal drones more palatable.

The Syn he'd captured on Friday was standing in the corner, its eyes closed as Ian had left them. He always closed Syns' eyes if he had to keep them overnight — something about the vacant stare was unsettling. He glanced at the Syn again. With its teal hair, its warm, dark brown skin, and its motherly smile, it had fit right in the playground. A friendly face any parent would trust around their children. He wondered if that was its initial appearance. Model BSYN21107 could alter it at will, according to the manual.

The paper manual. So no Syn could hack Ian's nexus to get it. Heavily redacted, of course, at least the models since series 076; older models were deemed too basic to bother redacting anything. No ability to alter their appearance, no nuclear capabilities, no hidden Easter eggs. But the 076 and upwards? Many a Tracker's life might have been saved if they'd known what to expect. Corps saw Trackers as nothing but tools, and the government was no better.

Still.

He'd written notes in the margins with every new ability a model revealed, always jotting down model numbers even if he didn't have the manual. Quentin had teased him for it. Had said Ian writing with a retro ballpoint pen was a sign Quentin was rubbing off on him, and then had proceeded to illustrate, in painstaking detail, what he'd meant by that turn of phrase.

He scrunched his face, throat tight as sunlight filtered through the window and made his wedding ring glint.

Where are you, love?

Ian piled the 075s and under on the floor to leave desk space for the rest. He might be clutching at straws waiting for Monday to arrive, but there was work he could still do.

Just as the day before, he worked through lunch and long past dinner. Just as the day before, he only stopped once his vision was so blurred he could no longer concentrate on a single word. And he was no closer to figuring out what the Syn was after.

He eyed the Syn he did have for the time being. Maybe he wouldn't send it in tomorrow. Maybe he could hack it, see if he could force a reverse connection, find out if the things were linked to a central hub. It would explain their processing power.

Reading was out of the question for tonight, but he could still plan over dinner. There were things he wanted to set in motion that would get him closer to finding Quentin.

Things that might mean Quentin would never want to look at him again, even if he managed to forgive the rest.

Ian ran a hand across his face, fingers pressing his temples in a futile attempt to relieve some pressure. He was going to find the Syn. He was going to capture it, and he wasn't going to send it back, even if the government never gave him another contract. He was going to go through every memory file, every single line of code, no matter how long it took, until he found its programmer's location.

Once he had that, whoever was behind this had better return Quentin unharmed, because there was nothing Ian wasn't prepared to do to get his husband back. And if they hadn't kept Quentin safe and sound?

He'd never known he had this darkness inside him, this boundless penchant for revenge, but they'd taken Quentin. They'd pray for death long before he granted it.

☰☱☲☳☴☵☶☵☴☳☲☱☰

Thank you for reading!

Just like it says in the image above, if you've enjoyed this chapter, I'd be thrilled with a vote.

As usual, any and all thoughts you might have on this chapter would make my week!

If you want to know what BioSynth!Quentin has bee doing while Ian is plotting bloody murder, tune in to BioSynth, SynTracker's companion novella (link on my profile). Remember, though, reading it will bring its share of spoilers, now that Ian has no way to know what's going on.